Excerpt: Fairest of Them All

--- new -- added 11/11/08 ---

Eve sat for several moments staring at the phone before placing it back on the cradle and flopping back on the couch. 'I should have known' she thought bitterly.

“Should have known what?”

Eve jumped to her feet and spun to face her intruder. “Who are you?”

“I am your Fairy Godmother.” The woman said in a sing-song voice as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “Didn’t Sven tell you I was coming?” She fluttered over to the couch muttering about the fickleness of dashing young vampires.

Now that Eve had overcome some of the initial surprise she noticed that the woman was hovering above the ground, little silver wings beating steadily like a hummingbird.

The fairy sat, and Eve backed towards the doorway.

“Now now, if I were going to eat you I’d have done it already. Come over here.”
Eve warily perched on the opposite end of the couch, ever muscle primed to run away at the slightest sign of trouble from the petite, winged woman claiming to be her Fairy Godmother.

“If you’re going to sign away your soul for unparalleled beauty, you’re going to need a fairy godmother.” The fairy untangled a peacock feather quill from her long crimson hair and a crumpled piece of paper from within her skin tight blue dress. “Now....” she scratched away on the parchment, the red ink from her feather quill glistening like blood on the parchment as she went.

Eve leaned as close to the parchment as she dared, but could not make out any of the words. “What are you writing?”

The fairy’s amber eyes rolled disdainfully. “You didn’t honestly expect to simply trade your soul for beauty without a contract!”

“A contract?” Eves eyes widened. Clarissa Eden had raised her daughter as a true social climber, she was terrified of contracts, especially those with the words “prenuptial” attached.

“Yes a contract.” The fairy snorted disdainfully and continued to scratch away in red, metallic smelling ink.

Several minutes passed in which Eve grew more and more agitated. She was torn between excitement for the new life she could see looming on the horizon before her and fear of the strange looking woman with her silver wings, blue skin, amber eyes, red hair and contracts.

At last, the fairy stopped writing. She read over her work, muttering quietly to herself, and then turned a too-bright smile on Eve. “Evangeline Eden,” she said in her funny sing-song way, “I, on behalf of the Lord of Darkness, offer to make you the most beautiful woman in the world in exchange for your immortal soul. If you will please read over this disclaimer, standard limitations of liability and warranty information, and sign here,” she placed a post it note beside a blank space, “and here,” another post-it, “and then we can get on to the good stuff.”

Eve skimmed the contract, reading the sub headings and skimming the rest. There was a bit in the Disclaimer of Warranties section that spoke of children that she did not understand at all, but she wasn’t planning on having children so she assumed that would not be important. When she reached the bottom she held out a hand for the quill.

The fairy was strangely silent while Eve read. There was a hungry gleam in her yellow eyes and her entire body from the top of her red head to the tip of her blue toes quivered with suppressed excitement. When Eve held out her hand for the quill the fairy’s lips curved into a triumphant smirk. She placed the iridescent feather in Eve’s hands and waited, quivering and gleaming and smirking.